The most refreshing feature is the inclusion of special sections that almost all lists of books fiction or non-fiction avoid, most notably science fiction and children's literature, whose development I know from my librarianship studies to have been highly significant in the context of the development of modern Western languages. The sections are in fact some of the highlights of the whole list.

What is perhaps rather unsurprising to me but still almost annoyingly obvious, however, is the extent to which political correctness motivates the Telegraph's choices. Having read the Politically Incorrect Guides and Benjamin Wiker's books, I can see the political correctness so clearly in the inclusion of:

Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince

Thomas Hobbes Leviathan

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species

William Ruddiman, whose history of the Crusades is debunked very easily by Serge Trifkovic

Das Kapital

Sigmund Freud

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Toni Morrison

I will confess here that the inclusion of Marx can be forgiven given that he is clearly the most important influence on the modern culture of Europe and Canada (plus to a lesser extent East Asia, New Zealand and even Latin America). However, when one sees Marx on the list, one asks where many other artists whose ideas influence modern culture are.

Where for instance is Nietzsche, who is after Marx probably the second most influential thinker on modern European culture? Where is Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, which swept aside Christianity among Europe's Boomers? Where is Silent Spring? Where in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money? Where is State and Revolution, which proved the model for every Communist regime?

The omission of the following also shows the political correctness of the list:

The Bible

Economics in One LessonorCapitalism and Freedom

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

G.K. Chesterton

Whittaker Chambers' Witness

Even such Christian writers as Austen, Tolkien, Lewis, Eliot, Chaucer and Blake are most likely included simply because of their popularity in an ultra-secular culture, rather than for any other reason (the author do admit popularity was an influence on their choices.

The biography section, too, seems a little strange, though that may be because the biographies I know about (like The Seven Storey Mountain) or have read (like the brilliant Helen and Teacher) are not known to the people who compiled the list. I would certainly have to see whether I find these biographies interesting, though perhaps I tend to judge biographies more by the person than the biographer.

1 comment:

The answer to why certain books you've heard mentioned in other lists are "missing" is quite simple: the list is far less didactic than the American lists. It doesn't try and prescribe a canon of books which (it's implied) everyone should read and believe, absorbing the values of the books on the way; rather, it's just a list of interesting and popular books. Hence the list is much better and contains many more potentially interesting books! It doesn't require that the reader believes everything that the books on the list say.

It's pure nonsense to call it "politically correct", and I would expect that the writers of the list would be offended by such a label. The didactic lists of the American religious groups are completely "politically correct" within their own political beliefs. Books not exactly embodying the political/cultural/religious values of such groups would never be promoted by them, and indeed lots of such books would be denounced. The aim is to develop a cultural monopoly rather than recommending some interesting and influential books. (The latter aim is much better and more civilised in my opinion.)

About Me

A former student at Melbourne and RMIT who hoped to get a job in librarianship by 2009.
Be wary that I tend to have very specialised interests and often do not want too general questions.
I enjoy reading about many difficult topics and would love to be able to discuss them with people who know more about them than people around me.
I have a particular love for lists of “best” or “worst” music or books, and love statistics a great deal.